Eight-year-old Nikki Hahn said she thought it would be cool to be a child beauty queen. That thought lasted about five minutes.

She learned about the tanning, the pounds of makeup, the itchy dresses and — of course — the pushy parents.

“After that, I said, ‘Uh-uh.’”

So, the child actress from Oceanside did the next-best thing: She lampooned the world of child beauty pageants alongside Tom Hanks in a spoof of TLC’s show “Toddlers & Tiaras.” The bit appeared on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after the Academy Awards Sunday night, and it’s been an online hit. In three days, the video received about 750,000 views on YouTube.

Toddlers & Tiaras

Family and friends from as far as Texas, where Nikki was born, have flooded the Hahns with e-mails and calls congratulating her on the appearance.

“It’s been a crazy experience,” Nikki’s mother, Alma, said Wednesday. “When we went to bed, it was at 400,000 hits, and now it’s over 700,000. Doesn’t anyone sleep?”

In the video, Nikki plays Hanks’ daughter, Sophie, a 6-year-old bratty pageant veteran preparing for the “Miss Ultimate Sexy Baby Nevada” pageant. She’s pushed into pageants by Hanks, who plays an over-the-top version of a pageant parent who lives his secret “padge” dreams vicariously through his progeny.

“I think my dad wants to be a pageant queen, but he can’t,” Sophie says about Hanks, as he prances about holding Sophie’s hand-sewn pageant dress.

The six-minute parody chronicles Hanks and Sophie’s training, from Hanks barking at his daughter when she doesn’t dance with “sexy feet,” to the two rejoicing when the mailman delivers Sophie’s 2-foot-tall pageant wig. At the “Sexy Baby” pageant, Sophie performs to a suggestive record from hair metal band Poison. But she loses the competition to “Rhonda Howard,” daughter of none other than Ron Howard, who directed Hanks in “Apollo 13.”

“Houston, Tom has a problem,” Howard gloats, while holding his “daughter.”

In real life, Nikki is a budding child actress. She started acting at age 3 after the family moved from San Antonio to Oceanside, where her neighbor Linda Belford, a photographer, encouraged the family to send their daughter’s head shots to talent scouts.

“I get parents all the time saying their kids should be in Hollywood, but in reality, only a handful of people will make it,” Belford said. “But when I saw her, I said, ‘This kid’s got it.’”

Several months later, she scored her first gig, an appearance in a Disney commercial.

Since then, she has appeared in nearly two dozen commercials and television shows, including “iCarly,” “The Closer” and “Criminal Minds.”

For the Hanks bit, Nikki’s agent sent over a synopsis of the part in January, and mother and daughter were off to Los Angeles for the casting call, where she found herself vying for the role with real pageant girls. The producers requested that Nikki return for a callback in February, and the next day, the family found out she had won the part. The skit was taped Feb. 14.

Nikki said working with Hanks was unforgettable.

“He gave me a huge hug when I arrived,” Nikki said. “He was really nice, and I’d love to work with him again.”

Attempts to reach Hanks through his publicist were unsuccessful.

Away from Hollywood, Nikki, who is home schooled, enjoys riding her bike, dancing, drawing and growing sunflowers. Her goal is to grow her biggest sunflower this summer.

And her parents, Alma and Tyson, a website developer, are definitely not “pageant parents,” Nikki said. This is her career choice.

“I love acting, it’s really fun,” she says, flashing an ear-to-ear grin. “It’s what I want to do forever.”